Hello to all our friends and family! Hope you’re enjoying the blog! Here’s an update on our wedding planning progress.

Officiant
We sent our deposit to Celia Milton, yay! I think she goes well with our personalities and will create the perfect ceremony for us.

Photographer
We met with three photographers. We didn’t even consider the first because we felt his prices were too high for what he was offering.

Garden State Photo seems like a great deal, but you’re not guaranteed the photographer of your choice unless you go with one of their premium packages. We were told that since our wedding wasn’t on a popular day, we would probably get the main photographer, but probably isn’t definitely. I’m not willing to gamble with the photography.

Marco Ricca has been my favorite photographer from the beginning. His prices are higher than some of these other photographers, but I think his quality is much better. He’s still in the reasonable price range and I get all the high res images to do whatever I want with which is important to me. And the most importantly, he primarily does candid photos which is what we are looking for. Unless I change my mind in the next few days for some crazy reason, we’ll be going with him.

DJs
We’ve only met with Ultimate Party Central so far. I really liked them, but I can’t find any reviews online. I called the Grand Marquis to ask what they thought of them. They do karaoke with plasma screens and a photo montage. They have over 700 karaoke songs to choose from including Disney music since they do kids parties too. I like that :P Well, something is a little bit fishy with Ultimate Party Central. They told me they have done weddings at the Grand Marquis, but the Grand Marquis has never heard of them, hmm. I checked online with the BBB and they have a D rating, not good. I found another DJ though, Create Excitement who have some really great reviews online. I set up a meeting with them for a couple of weeks from now.

We saw Elite Entertainment again at the bridal show this afternoon. All their DJs seem equally as good to me. I’m waiting to hear back on prices for karaoke services.

I also still have to meet with Colorblind Productions who I’ve been really bad at calling back.

Videographers
We’ve only seen videographers with DJ and photography services. Right now, Ultimate Party Central is my favorite and also had the best price.

Florists
I haven’t looked at any so far. I don’t even know if I want real flowers at the wedding. I’m not a big flower person. I’ll probably meet with Something Nice Floral Designs who I saw again today at the bridal show. The lady was very nice and they do have cute bouquets.

Save the Dates
We ordered our Save the Dates from VistaPrint this weekend designed by the lovely Jenn.

Dresses
We went on a trip to Bijou Bridal on Saturday to look at more dresses. They had me pick whatever seven dresses I wanted to try on. Three didn’t look good at all, two that were OK, one that looked adorable, but made me look like a little girl playing dress up, and one that I loved. Unfortunately, the one I loved was also twice the price that we wanted to spend on a dress. I like it, but I don’t know if I like it that much. After all, I’ll only be wearing this thing once. It was definitely more of what I imagined my dress to be than Martina. It had just the right amount of beading and just enough pickups. They wouldn’t let me take any pictures and it’s by their in-house designer, so I don’t have a picture to share with you, but trust me, it was nice.

Officiants
My original plan was to meet at least three of all the vendors, but since I’m a little short on dates I can meet with people on, unless we don’t like Celia for some reason, she’s probably going to be the only officiant we meet with.

Celia Milton has a million amazing reviews all over the internets. She seems pretty awesome and she has a wordpress blog. We’re meeting with her the Sunday after I come back from TX.

Photographers
I’m definitely making sure we meet with at least three photographers because we don’t have a very large photography budget, and they are very expensive, so I have to be a bit more careful in selecting one.

We’re meeting with Bill Mitchel Photography because we’ve lived down the street from their studio for years and they have very reasonable prices.

I think I might make an appointment with Garden State Photo. They have good reviews, their pictures seem nice and again, good prices.

My favorite right now is Marco Ricca. I think his photos are excellent and his prices are very reasonable for the quality. I also fully appreciate that you don’t need flash to view his site.

DJs
I have only found a few so far that do karaoke.

Espessway Music, who I’ve blogged about before. I’m going to speak with them later today.

Ultimate Entertainment, who don’t have the best website ever.

And then there’s Elite Entertainment, who keep sending me a million emails that I ignore because I’m lazy like that.

So Rachi and I, being the crazy people we are, went to a bridal show yesterday :D Hey, it was free and lots of fun. Everyone kept asking me what my wedding date was and I wasn’t sure what to say. They were all expecting 2008. Sorry, but I like to plan as early as possible. I told them I was getting married in Fall of ‘09, since that’s the earliest I could possibly get married.

There were around 20 vendors there I think. One bridal shop, a few tux places, a limo place, two entertainment places, an officiant, registries, photographers, a skin place, and various other wedding related vendors. We had to go around to all the vendors to get our sheet signed to be entered in for door prizes. I won Vera Wang glasses from Macy’s. I tried finding a picture, but they don’t have them on their site. They’re very nice though.

Here are some of the highlights of the show:

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